Thanks to Sunday’s triumph, the Flames once again leapfrogged the Los Angeles Kings, moving one point ahead of the Stanley Cup champions for third spot in the Pacific Division standings. The Kings do have one game in hand.

The Flames are also just one point behind the Winnipeg Jets, who are clinging to the final wildcard position in the Western Conference.

The crew from Calgary has six games remaining on its schedule, and it’s made it clear the goal is to win all of them. That’s probably not necessary, but they certainly can’t afford many losses.

The Flames host the Kings in Game 81 and then travel to Winnipeg for their regular-season finale, so fans might want to start growing out their fingernails for what could be a nerve-wracking win-to-get-in scenario.

One side of the Frozen Four bracket features teams that have combined for 12 national championships and 43 Frozen Four appearances.

On the other side, the national championships column is empty and Frozen Four experience is slight.

Boston University will play North Dakota in a semifinal matchup of two of the most accomplished programs in college hockey history. Providence and Omaha are matched in the other semi, with the Friars making their first Frozen Four appearance in 30 years and the Mavericks their first ever.

The Terriers and UND are both No. 1 seeds; Providence emerged from the East Regional as a No. 4 seed, while UNO was the No. 2 seed in the Midwest.

They’ll meet at TD Garden in Boston for the Frozen Four on April 9 and 11.

One is from the High Park area in the west end of Toronto; the other is from Pickering, the first community east of Metro Toronto.

One just turned 23; the other won’t turn 21 until June.

One is a late-blooming 6-foot-5 goalie who may be closer to 6-foot-6, with the size, confidence, calm demeanor and puck-stopping ability that has NHL teams falling all over themselves to sign him as an unrestricted free agent; the other is a 5-foot-10 goal-scoring left winger who may be closer to 5-foot-9, with an edgy, chip-on-his-shoulder mentality and high skill level that is perhaps, finally, causing some NHL teams to at least consider the notion the unrestricted free agent can be successful in pro hockey in spite of his size, or lack thereof.

For all their differences, though, there is much Matt O’Connor and Drake Caggiula share: two Canadians, both products of the Greater Toronto Area, who have taken the hockey path less travelled to play pivotal roles for their respective U.S. college teams in a head-to-head match-up against each other a week this Thursday, in the semifinal of the 2015 NCAA Frozen Four at Boston’s TD Garden.

One is a junior who wears the red and white of Boston University in Hockey East; the other is also a junior but in the green, black and white of the University of North Dakota in the National Collegiate Hockey Conference.

One will win; one will lose; which means only one is guaranteed to play for a U.S. college hockey national championship a week this Saturday in Boston.

Updated 5x at 8:21 AM: The Red Wings flew back to Metro Detroit perhaps feeling a little flummoxed after their 5-4 loss to the New York Islanders. After a stellar performance on Saturday, Petr Mrazek struggled to keep the puck out of the net on Sunday, as did Jimmy Howard--at least on the first of the 16 shots he faced--and as a result.

The Red Wings will host the Ottawa Senators on Tuesday and the Boston Bruins on Thursday, and due to Ottawa's 4-2 loss to Florida and Boston's 2-1 OT win over Carolina, the Atlantic Division standings look like this:

Boston sits 3 points behind Detroit, as well as 2 wins and 3 Regulation-or-OT wins behind Detroit, having played one more game than the Red Wings; Ottawa's 5 points behind Detroit, three wins and five ROWs behind Detroit, and they've played the same number of games; and Florida is now 7 points behind Detroit, with 5 fewer wins and 10 fewer ROWs, having played one more game than the Wings.

It's still not likely that the Wings, who also play in Minnesota and host Washington next weekend, before playing Carolina twice and Montreal once to close out the season, are going to fall out of the Eastern Conference playoff picture, but it is imperative that the Red Wings stop losing to ensure that their 3-8-and-1 March record does not push it into a Wild Card sport.

The Islanders had done just that due to their March struggles, so Sunday's game was far more important for the desperate Isles, and it showed, as the New York Post's Dan Martin noted:

The Detroit Red Wings faced a team dealing with an equally baffling slump and a March record nearly as bad as Detroit's 4-7-and-1 tally in the 3-6-and-3 Islanders on Sunday afternoon, and playing in a building that's vexed Detroit for the last 20 years in the Nassau Veterans' Memorial Coliseum--for perhaps the final time...

You had to worry that Detroit was going to look ahead to Tuesday's match-up against the Senators and Thursday's showdown with Boston instead of focusing on the task at hand, and the Islanders were so incredibly pissed off after losing yesterday's tilt vs. the Ducks that the player-and-coach comments made it sound like the Wings were in for a world of hurt.

How did it play out? It played out like a gigantic brain fart, with the Red Wings scoring 2 goals on the game's first 2 shots but Petr Mrazek giving up 3 on the first 3 shots he faced, only to be pulled for Jimmy Howard--who gave up what ended up being the game-winning, short-handed goal on the first shot he faced, all en route to what was an ugly, mucky, clutchy-grabby-hooky-holdy and just plain old dumb 5-4 Islanders win.

The Florida Panthers defeated the Senators 4-2 and the Bruins are tied 1-1 with the Hurricanes as I type this, so the Wings remain 5 ahead of Ottawa, who comes to the Joe on Tuesday, and are either 5 or 3 points ahead of Thurdsay's opponent with a game in hand.

... love the spin coming out of Toronto that Mike Babcock will charge over to the Leafs following this season. Yes. MLSE can make him rich but, for pity’s sake, he’d be inheriting a team that is chaotic in the boardroom, directionless and spiritless in the locker room and is at least five years away from competing for a playoff spot.

Sure, Babcock likes a challenge as much as the next guy, but let’s get real here. If he decides to leave Detroit he’ll have his pick of jobs, and stepping into that toxic waste spill in Toronto won’t be at the top of his list.

-Ed Willes of the Vancouver Province where you can read more hockey topics...

“They were very effective,” he said. “I’ve said it lots, right? You need everybody every shift to make the playoffs. Kopi’s line was a little off last night. Basically, all it is is Koivu’s line – three big players – dominated the game.”

And while the Kings are still fighting to get into the playoffs, and while Minnesota has risen past the wild-card fray into a divisional playoff berth for the time being (and perhaps longer), Sutter crossed one particular landing point off the postseason itinerary.

“Everybody’s trying to make the playoffs,” he said while rejecting an allusion that the team would face another “desperate” team in the Chicago Blackhawks on Monday. “We still have the opportunity to get home ice, as ‘desperate’ as we are. We still have the opportunity to go home in two weeks, so it’s one of the two. You’re not going to get a wild-card spot. The wild-card’s out of the picture.”

I thought about making this into an entry or leaving it be, and I did so as someone who knows that the Red Wings' coach is a very private family man who happens to have lost his mom to cancer when he was still a kid.

The last thing you want to do in this kind of situation is to step on people's toes or to make public something that they should be allowed to grieve in private. But I lost my dad when I was 14, and am dealing with the fears of chronic health issues affecting the one parent I've got left, so:

Sincere condolences to #McGill grad Mike Babcock and family on the passing of his father, Mike Sr., Saturday night.

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